Before swallowing whole, examine carefully. That’s the best advice for kids eating Halloween candy. It also works for adults reading the government’s mini-paper on the economic impact of NDP climate change policy.

This statement is really tiny, only 409 words, for a crucial piece of information so long in coming. Environment Minister Shannon Phillips typically uses more verbiage just clearing her throat.

The brief statement says “the real GDP impact is expected to be 0.3 to 0.4 per cent by 2022.” This means “growth is expected to be slower by about 0.05 per cent per year over the next six years.”

It doesn’t give any GDP totals or dollar estimates. Reporters are advised to consult other documents for that sort of comparative trifle. Putting it all together in the statement released Monday, it appears, would be a threat to cabinet secrecy.

From quarterly documents, we see that Alberts’s nominal GDP runs about $323 billion. A climate-policy drop of 0.05 per cent would cut $156 million out of that total. Over six years — the period outlined in the paper — the loss would be just short of $1 billion.

This sounds fairly minor, considering that Alberta’s GDP is already shedding up to $10 billion because of the recession-ridden economy.

But the question is — why choose this moment to pile a carbon tax onto a weak province, making things even worse? The opposition — especially Wildrose — will pound this point to the far side of forever.

The report goes on to say that the carbon policy will lead to at least one major pipeline, causing GDP to rise by one per cent, thus erasing the earlier loss.

Monday’s little statement also provides a straw villain — Ottawa, the very federal folks who hold the keys to pipeline salvation.

The document says an imposed federal carbon price, set to be $50 per tonne by 2022, wouldn’t recognize the specific needs of Alberta sectors, especially the oilsands.

That could reverse the economic benefit the provincial program would eventually produce because it’s tailored to Alberta’s economy.

While many government documents are vague, this one is more like a dense fog at midnight. Even the authors concede that “measuring the economic impact of carbon pricing is complicated.”

That’s surely true. It’s also certain that the government has measurements it’s not releasing.

Back in June, Herald columnist Chris Varcoe obtained a government projection that showed the climate plan would lead to 15,000 fewer jobs, a $4-billion drop in household income, lower corporate profits, reduced oil exports and a general loss of economic activity.

Overall, climate change action was expected to cut GDP by one to 1.5 per cent by 2022.

The NDP said, with some credibility, that those were preliminary estimates which didn’t include the plan to recycle revenue through tax rebates and energy incentives.

Phillips said then: “It’s an analysis, quite frankly, of what we didn’t do.”

The new figures — including the ultimate GDP loss of only 0.4 per cent — are based on the policy that’s actually coming into effect.

But it’s interesting that Monday’s statement brought no update for the other numbers Varcoe cited, including the 15,000 lost jobs and the huge plunge in household income.

Instead, the new report relies on a couple of GDP estimates and a lot of generalities about hidden benefits.

“While economic modelling accounts for the cost of carbon pricing and the benefits of revenue recycling, it does not fully capture many of the other benefits to Alberta,” it says.

“These include improved economic market access, improved social and health outcomes, increased cost certainty to business from an established carbon price schedule, and new innovations that may arise from carbon pricing.”

The New Democrats designed that policy, too. They truly believe they aren’t ruining Alberta’s economy, but saving it.

Wildrose, meanwhile, is promising to reverse nearly everything the NDP has done. They would take Alberta straight back to the Ralph Klein era. Alberta’s political divide is becoming an unbridgeable chasm.

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